


Shampoo & Conditioner (In One)

by aralias



Category: Legally Blonde - Hach/O'Keefe/Benjamin
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:40:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aralias/pseuds/aralias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the Christmas of 'Chip on My Shoulder', and Elle is working too hard, even for Emmett.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shampoo & Conditioner (In One)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dracobolt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracobolt/gifts).



> I saw as I was uploading this (i.e. after I'd written it) that you'd written something quite similar yourself. Hope you enjoy it nonetheless.
> 
> My thanks to my lovely beta, who American-picked for me.

Outside it was snowing. Soft, pretty flakes fell in droves from the clouds and settled over the buildings of Harvard Law School. Her students (or at least most of those who had stayed behind over the holidays) threw snowballs at each other and made snow effigies of their more frightening professors to destroy later, but Elle Woods was not among them.

Snow wasn’t that exciting. She’d been on ski trips practically every year of her life: it was kind of boring now. And cold and wet. Bruiser didn’t like it, either – the snow was almost as high as his nose in places, and it was frightening for a little dog. Her dorm room, on the other hand, was warm and dog friendly. There was also a large supply of Red Bull, a pile of pink and white candy canes, and most importantly of all her law books.

Elle Woods was working. She was working harder than she’d ever done in her life (including for her LSATs) and she was enjoying it, no really, she was. In fact, she had been working solidly since Emmett had left three days earlier. There had been the odd break in which she’d slept and eaten, and Paulette had brought her some tuna sandwiches (brain food, apparently - favoured by the Irish) two days ago, and of course, Elle had had to talk to her for a bit, but apart from that (and the times she’d taken down the poster of Warner, and then put it back up again, before taking it down again) she’d highlighted, and taken notes, and highlighted some other things, and written out more note cards, and read up on Callahan, and watched a few episodes of Ally McBeal (for research), and even more highlighting. OK, so she was going a bit cross-eyed with all the reading, but it would be absolutely worth it in the New Year.

A snowball smashed into her window. Elle got up, yanked open the window and saw Enid Hoops running away.

“Haven’t you got some orphans to save?” Elle yelled after. The moonlight glinted off the snow around the departing Enid in a totally unremarkable and not at all gorgeous way. Elle paid it no heed, and slammed the window shut again before she caught her death.

She attacked her books again with greater ferocity even than before, and when Emmett let himself in about an hour later she threw her highlighter at him before she realised it wasn’t more snowballers.

“Oh my God, Emmett, I am so sorry.”

“No. Good shot,” Emmett said. He rubbed the place where the pen had hit him squarely in the middle of his forehead. He sat down on her bed underneath the picture of Warner, which Elle now saw was a bit wonky. She’d have to fix it later. Or take it down again. Possibly both. “How’s it going?” Emmett asked, eyeing the pile of empty Red Bull cans with the nervousness of a former addict.

“Great!” Elle told him. “I am so prepared! Ask me anything.”

“You do know it’s Christmas Eve, don’t you?”

“I meant about law, silly,” Elle said, smacking him lightly on the arm with one of her books.

“Oh, right, I see,” Emmett said, taking the book she’d hit him with. “All right-” He turned the pinkly highlighted pages.

Elle waited patiently for a while, stroking Bruiser who had jumped into her lamp, and then the caffeine got the better of her. “Come on!”

Emmett held up a conciliatory hand. “Sorry. OK, what about this. The case of Russell versus Sullivan-”

“Sperm donor was the father,” Elle told him. “Easy.”

“Great.” Emmett shut the book. “Well done.”

“Another one.”

“Elle-”

“Another one!”

“Elle, it’s Christmas Eve-”

“I know,” Elle said. “That means there’s only ten days until class starts again. I have to be prepared. Ask me something else.”

“It’s not that I’m not impressed with your new work ethic,” Emmett said carefully. “Because I am, _really_ impressed.

“Uh huh,” Elle said. The off-kilter poster had become too annoying, and she got up to straighten it. Or take it down. “Well, you should be. I haven’t slept since,” Emmett was looking at her, so she took the poster down and threw it under her desk, “yesterday. Thank god for Red Bull!”

“Even I’m taking today and tomorrow off,” Emmett finished, closing the law book.

Elle looked at him forlornly. “You mean you won’t help me study?”

“I mean,” Emmett laughed, “I’d like you to keep me company. Otherwise I have to go home and watch Christmas specials on my own.”

“Emmett, you don’t have a television.”

“I know. I’d have to go out and buy a television. Then I wouldn’t be able to eat for the next three months. You have to save me from myself.”

“OK,” Elle nodded, “but only because you're so pathetic.” She pushed Bruiser gently from her lap, and got up to find her coat. “But you have to spend the twenty-seventh asking me lots of real questions. And help me find my gloves. I know they’re here somewhere...”

“Miss Woods you have yourself a deal.” Emmett stood up and revealed the gloves. “Ah ha! Jackpot. Are we ready?”

“Yes,” Elle said, draping a long purple scarf around her neck. “Don’t you have any other friends?” she asked, as she locked the door to her room.

Emmett laughed. “Actually I do.”

“Well, where are they?”

“I think they’re home with their families.”

Elle shook her head. “Slackers.”

“Exactly,” Emmett said. He stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers as they got outside. “That’s why one day we’ll be rich and important, and,” he said thoughtfully, “probably still completely unable to take the holidays off because we’ll be in the middle of some massively important case.”

“Remind me why we want to do this with our lives.”

“Well, I’d be able to afford a TV at least.”

“And maybe a coat?” Elle suggested, because Emmett was wearing the exact same corduroy jacket he’d been wearing throughout the term, despite the drastic drop in temperature. Pretty the snow might be, but it was also veryvery cold. Perhaps staying inside had been a good idea. “Aren’t you freezing?”

“I’m a New Yorker,” Emmett said with a grin. “We’re hardy. Besides, we’re almost there.”

“Almost where? Lapland?”

“No, no. My third home,” Emmett told her. “That’s after campus and my actual home. Remember I said I worked two jobs?”

Elle tried to nod, but her scarf was wound round her neck too tightly and she had to settle with “Uh huh.”

“One of those was your typical slave-wage admin position in a law office. I did that during the day, and in the evening I poured shots in a little place round the corner.”

“You used to tend bar?”

“Nice to think I have something to fall back on if the lawyering doesn’t work out, isn’t it?” Emmett said. “OK, this is it.”

It really was a little place, as in the kind of place Elle might have missed even if it hadn’t been hidden behind an enormous bank of snow, which it was. Emmett held the door open and a wave of warm air crashed out onto the floor. Inside it was dark, but festooned with tiny lights and (for the moment at least) holly wreathes. There was an old man playing up-beat Christmas carols on a piano in one corner, ten or so round tables filled with drinking laughing students and residents, and a long bar, behind which was an older woman with red-dyed hair who called out, “Emmett!” as they entered.

“Er, hi Mandy,” Emmett said, giving her a hug while his eyebrows tried communicate that this wasn’t normal behaviour to Elle. “What’s up?”

“You didn’t get my message? Will’s off sick, and Elaine’s gone back to her folks, and there’s all these people-”

“OK, I think I see where this is going,” Emmett said. “And I guess I could use the money. Elle, do you mind talking to me from behind a bar?”

“Yes,” Elle said.

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard me,” Elle said. “I’m not watching you work on Christmas Eve of all days. Let me help.”

Emmett exchanged looks with Mandy, the bar owner. “Elle, have you, er, ever worked behind a bar before?”

“ _No,_ ” Elle said with the same inflection she would have used to say ‘ _duh_ ’. “But I’ve been to a lot of them. How hard can it be? I got into Harvard.”

Five hours later, Elle danced around Emmett as he trudged slowly back in the direction of her dorm. “See, that wasn’t so hard.”

“You didn’t serve a single drink,” Emmett pointed out, with a windswept grin.

Elle waved the criticism away. “Oh, you and Mandy had that covered. What you needed was someone who didn’t look frazzled to sweet talk all the waiting customers.”

“Well, you certainly did that.”

“Exactly. We’re totally a team.” Pausing at her front door, Elle held up a gloved hand, for Emmett to high-five her. He looked confused a moment, and then belatedly smacked her palm. "All right!” Elle beamed. She turned to open the door. “Do you want to come in-” she broke off to scream and bounce, because behind the door were both her parents. “Mom and dad!”

They stopped what they were doing (perusing a copy of ‘Vogue’ and trying to get her new computer to work, respectively) to scream “Surprise!” (in her mom’s case) and hug her (in her dad’s). “What are you doing here?” Elle asked her mother and the back of her father’s neck.

“It’s all your friend Mr Emmett,” her mom said happily. She tottered over to take over hugging duties from Elle’s dad. “He called us up, and got you out of the room-”

“I thought you shouldn’t be alone for Christmas, no matter how much work you had to do,” Emmett said with a smile.

“Thank you,” Elle told him, genuinely touched.

“Thank _you_ for keeping all those surly bar flies in line. Anyway I should be going-”

Elle pulled herself free of her mother’s embrace. “No, stay-”

“No, really,” Emmett checked the watch on his wrist. “It’s almost midnight. Nice to meet you Mr and Mrs Woods.” He smiled, and backed away. “See you on the twenty seventh, Elle. Don’t work too hard. That’s coming from me.”

“He seems like a nice boy,” Elle’s mother said, after Elle had waved him off and the door had closed behind him. “Not as handsome as Warner, of course-”

“ _Mom_ ,” Elle protested, “Emmett and I are just friends.”

Her parents exchanged looks. “Of course, button,” her dad said. “I’m sure your mother was just commenting on how nice he was.”

“As a friend,” her mom added.

Elle bit her fingernails. “He is,” she said. “The best.” Then she smiled. “So what did you get me for Christmas?”


End file.
